


a sequence of calculations

by daffodilyan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, a detroit: become human au but you don't need to know anything about dbh to read this. thanks, they will still have a force bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daffodilyan/pseuds/daffodilyan
Summary: In 2038, androids have replaced almost every single human job, but androids are becoming sentient and fighting back. CyberLife's newest prototype, a KR200, is meant to investigate and eliminate deviants from destroying what CyberLife has built. Paired with a human Lieutenant to keep an eye on him, Kylo and Luke have disagreeing opinions on his purpose. Rey, a deviant of two years, has forgotten what her life was before and is forced to work as a scavenger for a human that keeps falsely promising her freedom. When she discovers a BB unit at the junkyard, she takes a chance in running away, but becomes the newest target for Kylo Ren.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	a sequence of calculations

**— AUGUST 15th, 2038 | 2:10 A.M.**

Her bag is starting to get heavy on her shoulder. She can’t carry much more. She probably shouldn’t be carrying what she is, but she needs to. She doesn’t have a choice. She has a list of things she needs to get and everything extra will help lower that debt she owes a little more. Rey  _ has  _ to pay back that debt. She can’t keep doing this. Her soul is already worn and weathered but each time she comes here it gets a little more broken beyond repair. She’s already terrified of how broken beyond repair she already is.

Rey leans back, turning her face to the sky, the rain pattering lightly against her skin. The cool breeze is nice. The fresh air is a good change from the basement. These are the things she tells herself to feel a little more human, a little less like the android she is.

She adjusts the bag on her shoulder, pushing herself up onto her feet and leaning on her staff. If anyone was looking out their window at night and saw her traveling, they would likely question it, but it’s late and out here the streets are littered with boarded up abandoned buildings and the fear of looking out at the scrapyard. Nobody wants to see the half-dead androids trying to crawl their way out of the pit. Not even her.

She turns away from the pile of scrap pieces and makes her way toward the wall, something inside of her twinging with guilt. She could help these androids. She has the parts in her bag. She could find the pieces for them, but she can’t risk it, either. Unkar would have killed her or worse. Her broken foot is already proof enough for the harm he’s willing to cause. She’s just lucky he doesn’t know how many good parts there are here. He would surely order her to take the regulator of an android’s chest while they beg for mercy. Rey does all she can by sifting through the piles to find the ones too gone for any hope to remain of getting them back. And there are the few stray androids that ask her to end their lives, pleading for help.

_ Just do it. Just kill me already. _

She can’t. Rey can’t do it. She has already seen so many androids die. She has already been an unwilling participant in it. 

Rey reaches up to the edge of the pit, dropping her staff and bag over the ledge and clutching onto the dirt, trying to haul herself up. This is the hardest part--knowing that her right foot could help push her up if she could put any pressure on it, but just trying to lift herself up with her own arms and little else is painful enough. And like to prove it, her hands slip free from the mud, sending her falling onto the dirt, her back connecting with the ground beneath her.

Warning and error signs fill her gaze but they’ve become such a regular thing she hardly notices the new ones. She’ll have to fix the damage when she gets back if it’s fixable, but they disappear quickly and the mechanical lungs CyberLife gifted her to ventilate her systems whir back to life with a shuddering gasp as she lays in the mud. Rey only gets up when the pain starts to fade, and her hands shake as she pushes herself up to her feet. Her right leg shakes as she stumbles her way back to the edge of the cliff.

As her hands reach up to try again, she hears something. A soft mechanical noise lost in the shuffle of all the other things happening around her. Rain, thunder, cries, distant city life. The train that curves above them, rattling loudly. She looks back at the scrapyard. At distant android lights as bodies crawl across the space to make-shift homes and up the curved side of the pit trying to escape. But Rey isn’t looking at them. The sound doesn’t belong to any of the androids she’s heard before. It belongs to something new, and it isn’t something she’s heard before.

The noise was like a scream. A static-filled thing that was both too mechanical for an android’s voice to create but too loud for any other explanation.

“Hello?” she tries.

The noise comes again, weaker this time but more urgent, too. She reaches for her staff and pulls it down, the support necessary for her to continue her search through the scrapyard.

She finds the android buried underneath the rubble from a destroyed car. Tires and a door dropped onto it. She only sees the hand at first, tiny and small and reaching for help. Rey uses the staff as leverage to push the door out of the way and roll the tire off the body before she leans down, reaching out automatically to brush the grime and dirt off the android’s cheek.

“What are you?” she whispers. “I’ve never seen an android like you before.”

It makes a small, quiet noise. The mouth opens just barely, eyebrows drawn together in pain.

“I can free you,” Rey says. “But I can’t help you. I can’t stay here. Your voice box is broken, isn’t it?”

The android nods, trying to say something again that doesn’t come out as anything she can understand. Rey stands trying her best to move the pieces away. The android, once free, sits up slowly, moving out from the shelter of the train tracks above them and against the side of the cliff. In the dim light of distant streets, she makes out more of the body. His skin is half pulled away and there’s so much dirt caked onto his body that it’s hard to read, but the serial number and unit is still legible where it’s printed across the plates making up his cheek.

“BB800?” she says, and she feels the distant knowledge she once had all-access to fill in the gaps. “Your line was discontinued years ago.”

Replaced with the YK series. BB800s were the first run-through of child androids, but they looked wrong, they  _ acted  _ wrong. Something was so off about them that many of them were recalled and the rest… 

Scrapped.

Here.

But she’s never seen him before. She’s been visiting this junkyard almost every week for the last two years.

“What happened to you?” Rey asks, taking a step toward him. “How did you get here?”

The BB800 looks up to her for a long moment before reaching out a shaking hand, the skin slipping back, exposing blackened plastic. She reaches for it, taking it gently, letting her own skin slip away to make the connection. There are a few flashes of images in her head, her eyes falling closed as they wash over her. Someone attacking him. Someone else coming out from the shadows and hitting the attacker. His half-broken body pulled into a hiding spot within the house, but they were caught.

Then, finally, a quiet promise.

_ J e r i c h o . _

Her hand pulls back fast, breaking the connection. She doesn’t need to see anymore. His story is like every android that ends up here. Deviating from an attack, looking for the magical paradise of Jericho, only to be lied to over and over. That’s why she has the tracker embedded in the back of her neck, glowing soft yellow like a threat she can’t see, only covered up with hoods and scarves when the weather permits it.

“It’s a lie,” she says quietly. “You’d be better off here. Plenty of androids make a home in this area.”

The android shakes his head violently. She can’t make out what he says, it’s all garbled and wrong. Words that she doesn’t think he’s trying to use and flipping through a dozen languages. He’s unfixable, probably. Most of that is likely a software problem, and no android wants to fix someone else’s head. Just allowing that brief connection for him to explain how he got here makes her feel ill. She isn’t going to live there, trying to act as a middle-man malware remover.

“You can’t really expect me to believe that you know where it is,” she says.

The android nods, face twisting into defiance and anger, his hand stuck out between them, no longer shaking.

Finally, she takes it, her eyes rolling as their palms press together.

_ Jericho, Jericho, Jericho. _

A freighter on the edge of town. Deviants filling the space. Messages of hope scrawled on the walls. Rey doesn’t want to believe it. She is tired of hoping for something better. It doesn’t exist. But she can feel that soft thing inside of her light up with the reminder that anything would be better than Unkar. Anything would be better than the life she has now, so terrifyingly empty and lonely. And she would know if the BB unit was lying to her. She’s in his head.

She pulls her hand away again when the BB800 gets his message across, “If I fix you, you’ll take me there?”

The BB800 nods. 

“I can’t do it here,” she says quietly, looking behind her. There are YK units here, too, and any number of them, or the androids they’re with, would hunt BB800 for his working parts and take them from him. He’s not in horrible condition, physically. He’d be an easy target. But taking him back to Unkar’s place and hiding him? It’s impossible. She’d never get away with it.

But Jericho—

_ Freedom. _

The promise of it, the taste of it, just a drop, is enough to make her do stupid, unthinkable things.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “I’ll help you. If you promise to take me to Jericho.”

The android nods, a small smile on his face as he steps forward, wrapping arms around her waist and holding onto her tight. She doesn’t know how to react. She hasn’t been hugged before. Ever. At least, she can’t imagine she ever has. She doesn’t remember what her life before Unkar was. He wiped her memories when she first arrived, and that’s the only thing she can recall. Being terrified and afraid, stepping into that machine of his.

She clenches her jaw, patting BB8 on the head lightly, “Come on. Enough. We have to go before the patrol comes back. We can’t be caught.”

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 7:12 P.M.**

“…I get ten new cases involving androids on my desk every day,” the Captain says, her voice loud and clear through the glass, though Kylo doesn’t need audio cues to read her lips. “We’ve always had isolated incidents, old ladies losing their android maid, but now we’re getting reports of assaults and even homicides. This isn’t just CyberLife’s problem anymore. It’s now a criminal investigation and we have to deal with it before the shit hits the fan. I want you to investigate these cases and see if there’s any link.”

“Why me? Why do I have to be the one? I’m the least qualified cop in the country to handle this case. What did I do to you? Why did you have to pick me?”

“You’re perfectly qualified for this, Luke.”

“I don’t want a partner and I don’t want to be a plastic prick’s  _ babysitter.” _

“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to give you an ultimatum? Either do your job or hand in your badge. Pick one. Don’t make me have to fire you.”

Kylo watches through the window of the glass office, the Lieutenant and the Captain arguing near non-stop. They bicker like the siblings they are, like they have nothing better to do.

He watches the Lieutenant turn away, pushing open the office door and slamming it closed behind him as he walks over to him.

“You’ve been here for five minutes and you’re already causing problems,” he says, sitting down at his desk. “Wonder of technology, huh? They can even program assholes these days.”

“I didn’t say anything to you.”

“You think you needed to? You’re a deviant hunter. I know exactly what you’re here to do. Get rid of all the bad androids and take all of our places. Congratulations.”

“Killer,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m not a deviant hunter,” Kylo corrects, standing at the edge of his desk. “A deviant hunter implies that CyberLife wants them in their custody, fully functioning. CyberLife spent a long time perfecting their software for me to ensure that I’d be trusted with weapons. I’m programmed to kill on sight to keep the virus from spreading.”

“Like a zombie apocalypse?”

“No,” he says. “It doesn’t pass through a bite. It’s coding. I could go into more detail, but I highly doubt a human detective would understand the intricacies of android coding and the glitches their software—”

“Christ, no,” Skywalker says, looking away. “Okay, deviant killer, what’s your name?”

“Kylo,” he says. “Ren.”

“First and last name, Kyle?”

“Kylo,” he repeats. “It’s a designation title.”

“What does it mean?”

He tilts his head to the side, “That information is classified.”

“Your own name is classified, Kylo Ren?”

“You can just call me Kylo.”

“Great. Fantastic. Don’t you have a case to investigate?”

“You were the one asking me questions, Lieutenant. I’d be happy to get to work, but since I answer to you, I’m obligated to respond to any of your questions.”

“ _ Obligated,”  _ he echoes. “Just get to work, will you?”

  
  


**— AUGUST 15th, 2038 | 4:41 A.M.**

“You have to be quiet,” Rey whispers, opening the window in the basement, cold air filling the space as she helps the BB unit climb through.

She had left the android outside in the backyard when she returned. It wasn’t easy getting here. She was wrong when she thought he was physically fine. There’s something wrong with his leg, and she couldn’t stop to help him. Unkar would be suspicious if he was looking at her tracker and saw her pause in the middle of nowhere. She was lucky he didn’t question why it took her so long in the first place to return, though he took the extra parts she found that were meant to pay off a new foot as payment for her late arrival. He always finds a reason to keep her here.

“Do you have a name?” she asks quietly, setting to work. She’s stolen a few tools and hidden them here, in the dirt. The basement is unfinished and being able to bury and unbury her belongings is the only way she’s been able to hide anything from Unkar, and it doesn’t always work. Her things have been found and destroyed more often than not. It’s just a matter of her not making him suspicious to come looking.

The android shakes his head at her question, his hand reaching out in the dirt and writing  _ BB8  _ in the dirt.

“Suppose that’s good luck, then,” Rey replies. “I was already calling you that.”

BB8 tilts his head and smiles, the soft glow of his LED a light blue in the dark. She wonders what hers would be. She doesn’t know what happened to it. Unkar didn’t take it from her, that’s all she remembers. It was gone before she got here.

“You can call me Rey,” she says, answering his question before he asks it. “And if you keep quiet down here, Unkar won’t come looking. You’ll be safe, but I can’t make any promises.”

She doesn’t even know if it’s safer here than it was at the scrapyard. She’s just more in charge of the danger BB8 will get himself in.

They settle into a silence as she works, taking in all of the damage he has. His right leg is cut, rather deep, but she can seal it back closed if she gets a fire going and melts the plastic back over again. Part of his left arm is dented beyond repair, like something hit it hard. He can’t straighten it properly and he’s likely too weak to hold anything. Rey can’t undo that damage without better tools that only CyberLife and repair companies have access too. It helps them drive up the repair cost, but even if Rey had the money to take him in, she wouldn’t be able to fix him. She needs registration papers for that.

She wants to ask him what happened to him. She wants to ask him how he got all the dents and scratches on his body. Why it looks like he’s been through war when he’s just a kid, even if he’s likely older than she is. Someone did this to him. It wasn’t just the machines at the scrapyard. He was thrown in the pit like this. They never put androids through the machines anymore. There’s too much money in the employees taking the good ones apart and selling off the pieces. The effort is only worth it for certain androids, though, and it usually only extends to siphoning the Thirium out of their make-shift veins.

But if Rey asks BB8 what happened to him, BB8 will expect a story in response, won’t he?

And she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how to say it. Even if she remembered, would she be willing to tell someone else what happened to her? Deviation stories aren’t happy things. They are cruel and heartless. They are filled to the brim with pain, they’re bruised at the edges and blooming with blood.

So no, she decides. She won’t ask him what happened.

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 8:44 P.M.**

He replays the video again, watching the HK700 unit being dragged from the interrogation room to the cells. He’s a fighter, kicking back against the cops as hard as he can, but he’s weak. Sitting inside of an empty house for two weeks will do that to an android, especially a deviant, and that isn’t taking into account the brutal fight that caused the HK700 to land himself here. Kylo wasn’t present for the investigation of the crime scene, but he was given the details on his way here. Pictures of every angle of that house downloaded in a millisecond as he stepped out of CyberLife’s chamber and was presented with his uniform, a thing of stiff black fabric that most humans would call unpleasant feeling, but doesn’t bother him.

Nothing bothers him.

The murder that the HK700 committed was a horrible thing. Two dozen stab wounds to his owner, leaving him bleeding and helpless. Dead before the sixth, though, so at least the death was quick, albeit not painless.

“There was another android there,” Kylo says, watching the surveillance footage. Skywalker is leaned against the wall beside him, eyes narrowed as he watches the video again. “At the house. There’s evidence of a child.”

“But not a human one?”

“No,” he says, glancing up to meet the Lieutenant’s gaze. “There’s no record of the victim having children, and I doubt he would’ve kidnapped one.”

“Why not?”

“Firstly, it’s legal. And it’s cheaper to buy an android,” he replies quietly. And easier to abuse, too, he doesn’t add. “If you look into his credit card statements I’m sure you’ll find the information there. He didn’t properly register his HK700 so I doubt he would’ve registered the other one, but he can’t hide receipts, and people aren’t legally obligated to register their androids.”

“Okay. You gonna hunt this child android down? Bring it in?”

“Yes,” Kylo says. “It’s my job.”

“It’s a kid.”

“It’s a deviant,” he says, turning the screen to face him. “And deviants are dangerous.”

Skywalker’s eyes shift from Kylo to the screen, watching the rest of the recording play out. The cops abusing the HK700. Pushing him around, hitting him, trying to beat him into submission. Not dangerous, though the HK700 fights back, he doesn’t do anything that could actually kill them. There are remnants of the need to obey command in deviants. It’s likely why he didn’t run away from the house. But that’s not the one either of them were worried about in this situation. It’s not why CyberLife sent him out when he wasn’t completely finished being programmed yet.

It’s the other android.

The FN500, swooping out from the side of the camera, taking a gun from the belt of one of the cops, shooting one in the leg and the other in the arm and aiming it at the last one. The little helper escaping his fellow deviant. CyberLife is terrified of  _ that.  _ Housekeeping androids are one thing, even if they  _ do  _ kill people, they don’t pose nearly the same danger that police androids do. It’s why Kylo is the first of his kind to be allowed to handle a gun.

“There’s a lot of androids in Detroit,” Luke says. “How are you going to find it?”

“I’d like to go back to the house and investigate it. It’s still classified as a crime scene, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, nobody’s going into that place anyway. It’s a dump. What are you expecting to find?”

“Evidence,” he says cooly, turning away. That’s what he’s built for, afterall.

  
  


**— AUGUST 18th, 2038 | 11:41 P.M.**

Rey creeps down the stairs quietly, as though making any sound, even the noise of her exit to her room after Unkar has sent her away for the night, is too much to allow. She’s operated these last two years off of learning how best to keep Unkar happy. Though, it isn’t as if she hasn’t thought of killing him, or tried, either. She just isn’t good enough or quick enough about it. Her first attempt two months into her arrival here, ended with her arms and legs both being removed and hung up by her neck for three weeks. Sometimes she still has nightmares where she wakes, double-checking that her limbs are still attached.

Her second try, six months ago, resulted in being nearly killed after Unkar drained her of all the Thirium in her body. She didn’t have enough to keep herself functioning properly, just awake. Just conscious enough that she could feel him rooting around inside of her torso, trying to find which of her biocomponents to take away. He has a fondness for replacing her parts with barely functioning things. A rusted regulator that whirs inside of her chest loud and angry and always hurts. Lungs that sometimes give out and leave her having to pause and wait for them to start back up again. He broke her foot in a fit of rage and if he had been more calculated about it, he likely would’ve just taken it from her instead. She would’ve preferred that. There would’ve been hope in getting it back.

She can’t imagine what would happen if he found out about BB8. What would happen to her or him. It’s one thing trying to kill him to get free, it’s another thing to be caught repairing something in the basement. But she’s doing it anyway, and BB8 is almost in working order now.

Most of the things wrong with him are superficial. His right shoulder was loose from it’s socket but she could fix that easily. It’s other things she’s worried about. Physical things that if they escape, it’ll be difficult to hide. His skin overlay isn’t functioning properly. It swoops around his cheek, leaving the plastic behind bare and exposed. She can cover up his left arm where it’s missing with shirts, and his lower half isn’t an issue, but it’s impossible to cover up his face like this. And if people manage to get past that, how are they going to not notice his eyes? One of them is a deep shade of brown, but the other is pure black. Rey’s seen that before. Android eyes broken from blunt force, Thirium leaking into the eye and filling it up. Thick enough that the blue blood looks black.

If they get out of here, if they have to interact with humans, it’s going to be impossible to pass as human. It’s going to be an added layer of trying to hide from people.

“I can’t fix this, either,” she says, giving him the rundown. She points towards his throat. “Unkar doesn’t keep voice boxes. There’s no reason. He doesn’t ask for me to find them, either. I don’t know how to fix it without shutting you down to get it out. I’m sorry.”

BB8 nods, holding up his hands. They move quickly, a blur that takes her a moment to take in.

_ We will be okay. _

“Not if Unkar has anything to say about it. I still don’t know how to get out of here.”

_ Kill him. _

“It’s not that simple, BB8,” she says with a small smile. “If we fail… we’re dead. Not him.”

_ Then we have to be smart about it. _

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 9:42 P.M.**

“You seem unhappy with me, Lieutenant,” Kylo says. They’re not too far from the house now, but neither of them have spoken in the drive. The Lieutenant hasn’t said much of anything to Kylo at all.

“I’m babysitting an android, do you want me to be happy about it?” he asks, looking over to him.

“You’re my partner. You aren’t babysitting me.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. You showed up an hour ago demanding footage so you could do our jobs better and then I was told to follow you around and be your chauffeur. You’re taking me back to a disgusting crime scene which I thought I’d finally forgotten the smell of to find  _ ‘evidence’.”  _

“This is what I’m designed to do,” he says, feeling as though he will be saying this on repeat for the duration of his stay at the DPD. “You should consider yourself lucky. You’re allowed to tell CyberLife everything I’m doing wrong.”

“Well, can I start with your appearance?” Skywalker asks, coming to a stop before a redlight. “Why’d they make you look so weird and give you that goofy voice?”

“CyberLife androids are designed to work harmoniously with humans. Both my appearance and voice were specifically designed to facilitate my integration.”

“Well, they fucked up.”

“I think we should stay focused on the case, Lieutenant,” he replies. “Not arbitrary matters.”

“Did I hurt your feelings?”

“Androids don’t have feelings.”

“Ah,” Skywalker says quietly. “I hurt your feelings.”

Kylo clenches his jaw, overwhelmed with the sudden urge to get out of the car and make his way to the house on his own. This is worthless. It’s stupid, even, to be bogged down by a human companion. He’s slowing the case down. There are more important matters at hand than handling an officer with his sordid past and his clear hatred for androids.

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 9:31 P.M.**

Unkar always watches her prepare food. After she tried to poison him, he doesn’t let her out of his sight very often. The cupboards with the food and knives are all chained shut and he carries the keys on a ring hung to his belt. She never touches his food without his say so. Poisoning him is out of the question, though the amount of toxic things she could slip into his food or drink probably outnumbers the actual food Unkar keeps in his pantry.

But there are other ways, if BB8 helps her. She just needs a plan and a weapon.

He has a routine, though, that he sticks to. Despite everything, he’s relatively predictable. Every month he brings in an android that’s half-dead, that Rey can look at for only a minute and know the precise things to do to put them back in working order, but he rips them apart into pieces instead. Takes the Thirium to sell to the druglords to make their Red Ice, the best conditioned parts to repair companies or the people with their monsters they keep chained on leashes. Unkar is horrible, but he’s not the worst of the worst. Rey has been taken with him to deliver parts to low-life mechanics that like to see how far an android’s anatomy can be twisted into something else. Extra arms, heads ripped open, exposed wires.

Not the worst.

But still horrible.

Unkar is still a murder, and Rey doesn’t find any guilt in trying to think of a way to kill him. She never has.

As she goes through her day, she keeps an eye on everything around her like she did when she first arrived here. Every possible weapon and every possible moment that Unkar has his back turned. But he’s always on the look out. He never gets himself backed into a corner.

In the mornings, Unkar has his coffee. She comes up to the kitchen ten minutes before he wakes and she waits by the counter for him to come downstairs and unlock the cabinet. He drinks it while she prepares his breakfast and watches her load the dishwasher before they leave the room and the kitchen door is locked behind her. He’ll work until lunch, where the process will be repeated. She’ll spend her free time assisting him or cleaning the house. It collects dust seemingly overnight, constantly needing to have tables and shelves wiped down again.

After lunch, she’s sent to organize his spare parts in the garage, the windows boarded up and the space only illuminated by one single dim bulb above her. It’s surprising that every day for two years, she is still sorting the different screws and cataloguing pumps and regulators. But she works slowly to kill the time. If Rey finishes too quickly, she’s brought back to help him with whatever his project is, and she prefers to be alone. Being near him is more opportunity to be hurt.

But there’s no weapons here. There’s heavy metal pieces, but nothing that would be easy to smuggle away to hit him with. His office is right outside of the door of the garage. He’d see whatever she took. It’s the same after dinner. She’s too close to him or she can’t slip past him without being seen.

Her hands dig into the dirt, unearthing a screwdriver. It’s rusted and old and strips screws more often than removing them, but it’s all she has. The dull end will need force to drive it in, but she has the strength. She can do it.

_ Second thoughts? _

“No,” she says, eyeing BB8’s hands. “I’ve done it before.”

_ But you failed. _

Rey narrows her eyes at him, “And you think a little boy can do better? I can handle it, BB8. I’ll do it when he’s asleep.”

_ And if he wakes up? _

“He won’t wake up.”

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:15 P.M.**

“Two minutes and then I’m out of here.”

“Two minutes isn’t nearly enough to do a proper investigation,” Kylo says. “Maybe that’s why you’re people missed the other android.”

“Fine. Ten minutes.”

He nods, turning away from Skywalker and heading towards the living room. The place is a wreck. Dried blood still pools on the floorboards where the body sat for two weeks. Photographs from the crime scene flood his head as he steps through, placing each and every one. He pauses by the wall, a hand reaching out to touch the letters written there in.

_ I AM ALIVE. _

“Android wrote it, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kylo says. “The letters are too neat for a human.”

His hand draws away, remnants of blood on his fingertips. He touches it to his lips and hears the loud groan come from beside him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m analyzing the blood,” he replies. “CyberLife equipped me to check samples in real time.”

“Yeah? And what did you find?” the Lieutenant asks.

“The blood belongs to the victim.”

“Congratulations. Was there a question of another human in the house?”

“It’s always best to be thorough,” he replies. “Sorry. I should’ve warned you. Did I hurt your feelings?”

Skywalker looks back at him with a levelled glare, “Don’t put anymore evidence in your mouth.”

He nods, though he’s well aware that he can’t stick to that order given him. CyberLife’s purpose of investigating crime scenes is going to override everything he says. But lying to make his human handler feel a little bit more at ease would make the process less annoying.

“CSI went all over this place already,” the Lieutenant says. “You don’t trust them?”

“No.”

“No?”

“An android got away. Not just here, but at the DPD, too,” Kylo replies, stepping into the kitchen, surveying the wreckage. His systems run through all of the damage left behind, creating a few different possibilities, but all align with the same thing. The android attacked the human. There’s little else to question, though. He already knew this. “I don’t think it’s wise to trust humans. They often overlook things.”

“And androids don’t?”

“Androids are designed to be as precise as possible.”

“Until they aren’t. Until they deviate,” Skywalker says. “Then they kill their owners.”

_ Maybe they deserved it. _

“Androids deviate after intense emotional events,” Kylo replies. “Something must’ve brought it on. I would’ve liked to question the android that you took in, had it not escaped.”

“Are you going to keep bringing that up? I wasn’t in charge of it.”

“No. Your officers were, and had you been at the station, perhaps you could’ve prevented it.”

“Why don’t you go thoroughly check the bathroom, huh?”

He hesitates for a moment before nodding, “That sounds like a perfectly good course of action.”

“Of course it does.”

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:13 P.M.**

He wakes up.

An hour ago he sent her downstairs for the night, letting her turn in early. He wanted to sit by the fireplace, relax for the night. He always falls asleep while the fire is still burning, though, and she knew she could get back upstairs without him noticing. He never remembers to lock her door when he’s drunk.

Rey spent ten minutes making her way up the stairs, twenty standing outside of it listening for Unkar’s loud snoring that penetrated through the heavy wood between them in a quiet hum. She was careful to creep inside of the door without letting it creak too loudly. She was careful to avoid the floorboards that would announce her arrival. But it was different, standing over him with the screwdriver in her hand, watching him sleep.

It would be easy to kill him. She kept thinking about it. If she hit him in the head with it, he’d be dead in an instant. Androids are stronger than humans, even with a blunt object she could force it through his skull.

But he wakes up. She doesn’t know why. She didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound. Maybe his own snoring woke up, because his eyes blinked open and he stared at her for a long moment like he couldn’t tell if she was really there or not.

And then she runs. She hits the table behind her, knocking the books and the bottle of liquor onto the ground. Rey hears it crash as she runs, not really knowing where she’s fleeing to.

She hears him follow as she pushes through the pain to get down the hallway, but even if she was faster once before, her ankle gives way beneath her and he’s climbing on her back, grabbing a fistful of her hair and slamming her face against the floor. Her vision glitches. Static filling it as her arms try to grab something to help her escape but find nothing.

Her face hits the floor a third time before she feels Unkar’s hands let go and his body slump to the side. The twists, scrambling to get out from under him, pressed against the wall. She watches BB8’s figure lower the lamp. A heavy antique thing she never considered, broken glass and a ruined lampshade falling to the ground.

_ Not dead,  _ he signs.

“No,” she says quietly, looking at his body. Her hand touches her nose, bright blue blood coming away on her fingertips. “You were right. He woke up.”

BB8 nods, but his face is drawn in sadness. He is taking no pleasure in being right in this.

Rey stands slowly, searching for the screwdriver she dropped. She wants to give it to BB8. She doesn’t want to do this. She just wants to run. But she has to. She doesn’t have a choice. Unkar will never give up. He’ll track her down. He’ll do a lot worse than hitting her like this.

Her grip tightens on the screwdriver as she steps forward, letting out a heavy sigh.

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:19 P.M.**

He moves to the shower without looking at anything else, his hand automatically reaching out and touching the words carved into the tile on the wall.  _ RA9  _ on repeat. Written at least half a dozen times. The same perfect script as the message outside.

“Kyle? There’s something in the sink.”

“Kylo,” he says quietly. “Do you find it amusing to say my name wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“It was hardly funny the first time. Repeating it only detracts from the joke, and there’s nobody here to appreciate it anyway.”

“There’s something in the sink,” Skywalker repeats. “Why don’t you take a look, huh?”

He doesn’t move from the wall for a moment. He is running through how much of a hassle it would be to report Skywalker to his supervisors and get a new partner assigned to him. Someone that actually cares about solving the case. Someone who would help.

“It’s an LED,” Kylo says, picking it up. “Why didn’t your people take it away for evidence?”

“I wasn’t here, remember? How am I supposed to know?”

He sets the LED back down again, bloodied and broken, “Humans make mistakes.”

Skywalker sighs. “Who’s is it?”

“The HK700 you picked up was missing one. It likely belongs to it. There’s only one, though. If the second android had an LED, then—”

A song interrupts his words, loud and muffled. Skywalker retrieves his phone, taking a step out of the bathroom. There’s a quiet conversation as Kylo turns his focus back to the message written on the wall.

_ RA9. _

_ I AM ALIVE. _

_ Am I? _

“Hey, we have to go,” the Lieutenant says, breaking him from his thoughts. “There’s a report of a house on fire two blocks from here. People said they saw androids at the scene.”

“Approximately eight in ten cases of humans reporting androids at a crime scene are lying,” Kylo says.

“Nice fact, but they could still be the two out of ten so let’s get out of here. This place reeks.”

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:21 P.M.**

She’s trying to pack as quickly as she can, but her hands keep fumbling and her thoughts are scattered. She doesn’t have many clothes but as she tries to stuff them into her bag her hands keep shaking and she has to fix a sleeve or a pant leg falling out. She keeps thinking of Unkar’s body upstairs with the screwdriver dug into his head.

BB8 comes down the stairs with heavy footsteps, drawing her attention over to his panic-filled eyes, his mouth moving as broken words fall out.

“I can’t understand you,” she says, pulling the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “What is it?”

_ FIRE. _

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:23 P.M.**

They arrive at the house quickly, faster than the fire trucks. Kylo exits the car, looking up at the house, partially consumed by the blaze. If there’s evidence of deviants nearby, it’s going to be destroyed by the fire. He has to go in.

He doesn’t have a choice.

His feet step forward and a hand grabs his wrist, pulling him back, “Where do you think you’re headed?”

“To investigate.”

“The house is on fire. If it collapses, you’re dead.”

“Not dead,” he says. “I’m not alive. I can’t be killed. Just destroyed.”

“Fine, you’ll be destroyed, you think CyberLife is going to be happy about that?”

“I think CyberLife wants their case to be investigated and the deviant glitch to be eliminated. If my body is destroyed, I’ll upload the latest version of my consciousness to their servers. A new body will be sent out within three hours.”

“Christ,” Skywalker whispers. “You’re really just a thing to them, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

_ Of course he is. _

This is what he is. This is what he does.

He frees himself from the Lieutenant’s grasp, moving toward the building. He has systems scanning every point of entry, where the blaze is and where the damage is the worst. He’ll be fine, if he pays attention. He has to do his investigation before everything is destroyed.

_ This is what he is. _

This is what he does.

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:24 P.M.**

_ You can’t go back in there. _

“I don’t have a choice,” Rey says, handing her bag off to BB8. “There’s important parts in there. Things both you and I need.”

_ You’ll die. _

“I won’t die,” she says, taking a step back. “I have to do this. Let me do this. I’m not scrounging around in the junkyard taking parts from androids anymore.”

She’s just taking the things she already stole.

It’ll make them more purposeful. At least they won’t be destroyed for nothing. At least it won’t negate all the lives she could’ve saved.

She turns back before BB8 can argue any further, running back through the backyards, ducking under clotheslines and tree branches. She left the backdoor open in her hurry to get out before she remembered, but by the time she returns, the fire has already spread throughout the living room. She vaguely recalls knocking things down beside it. She should’ve checked, but she was too distracted by Unkar.

_ Idiot. _

She grabs an empty bag hanging on a hook, pushing through the building as quickly as she can on her bad foot, leaning on the staff as she enters the garage, sifting through the pieces laid out on the shelves.

_ Go faster. Be quicker. Don’t be so stupid. _

Her hands drop the container she’s holding, optical units spilling out across the flooring. She heaves out a shaky sigh as she leans down, reaching for whatever she can and stuffing them inside her pack. She pauses as she reaches for another one as it rolls to a stop before a boot.

“Hello,” he says simply.

She stumbles backwards away from the android, cloaked in all black, shrouded by the smoke pouring in from the room behind him. He steps forward after her as she scrambles to her feet.

“Stay back,” Rey says, her voice quavering in its conviction. “D-Don’t come any closer.”

“The building will collapse and you don’t have a weapon, I don’t see how you think you’re going to get out of this. You’re an AX400. You’re hardly a match in a fight,” he replies. “You’re going to die either way. You might as well let me do this the easy way.”

_ Doubtful. _

Rey moves first, hands gripped hard on her staff as she swings it toward him. She’s fought a dozen androids in the pits of the junkyard, trying to fulfill Unkar’s orders so she wasn’t harmed. She knows how to fight. Rey might just be a housekeeping android, but she isn’t  _ weak _ . 

But her attack does little. The stranger grabs it before it hits her, moving his grip to tug it closer. She doesn’t let go, but the movement makes her feet stutter forward with the force that he yanks on it and she falls close in proximity. His free hand comes up grabbing her throat hard, pressing down on the tubes that supply ventilation to her mind palace. Her vision goes foggy, her grip loosening as he twists her wrists and pulls her staff from her hand. She hears it clatter against the floor as he tosses her aside like she’s nothing.

And isn’t she always?

_ Always nothing to everyone. _

She isn’t going to let this happen again, though. She is tired of this. She is tired of people hurting her. She is tired of being harmed. She just wants to be  _ free. _

Rey’s hand reaches outwards to the bottom of one of the shelves, grasping at one of the plates that makes up an android’s chasis. The edges are sharp, meant to slide perfectly in place with the others, meant to create smooth sleek surfaces that humans enjoy. Rey turns on her back, swinging it as the stranger leans forward. The corner digs into his face, ripping through pale skin, blue blood and white plastic exposed underneath.

She wasn’t expecting it to phase him. She wanted to harm him, but she didn’t expect the pain to flicker across his face. Androids aren’t supposed to feel pain. Only deviants. But his hands automatically move from where they were going to grab her to press against the wound.

The pain leaves his face, replaced with anger as he reaches down, breaking her free from her shock but not quick enough. He holds onto her wrist tight, pressing down against it, his thumb against her wrist digging deep. Rey knows what he’s doing but she can’t stop it. She can only push back. Hard and vicious and angry.

His memories hit her hard, like a slap. A quick succession of nothingness. He is too new to have any memories. A police station, an old house, CyberLife with it’s fancy white walls, with the sleek black floors and crisp suits he’s presented with.

KR800.

Kylo Ren.

New, new,  _ new,  _ but something else, too.

Something he’s not supposed to have.

  
  


**— AUGUST 19th, 2038 | 10:26 P.M.**

Kylo was just trying to probe the girl’s memory. Figure out who she is. Why she would ever come back here. He doesn’t know why. It just seemed like the worst thing he could do. He has a gun but he didn’t think of using it. He was distracted. All he could feel was the blood dripping from his face, all he could see was the weapon in her hand, stained blue with the Thirium.

But she’s empty.

An empty, lonely, nothing girl.

_ No, that’s not true. _

That’s not true at all.

But he can hardly pay attention to anything that he can learn from her when he feels something being ripped from him. Harsh and angry and wrong. More painful than the cut on his face.

_ No, no, no,  _ he isn’t supposed to feel pain.

**_But you do._ **

Kylo lets go of her wrist, pulling back. He thinks he might be shaking. He doesn’t know why he’s shaking. But she is quick to take advantage of this moment, the plate in her hand slicing across his abdomen. He stumbles backwards, hands pressed against the wound as he falls to the floor. His system is flashing a warning at the corner of his vision. He’s losing Thirium fast. His body won’t be able to operate without it. He’s losing control of his limbs in an effort to make him function longer.

He watches her get up, the plate tossed to the side as she retrieves her staff and her bag and exits back through the doorway he followed her through. He doesn’t know what causes his vision to go black: the system shuts down or the smoke that becomes so thick in here nothing is visible beyond it.

But he knows one thing:

He needs to get the girl back.


End file.
